My heart is in The Hubbs’ stomach?

Not been feeling good the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking a lot lately.

Having so many health problems where you know that things can either be stable or things can be bad, has been making me worried.

Monday was a rather horrific day for me. I had been dealing with pain all weekend long, which means that I was hopped up on the Moose for three days straight and made it a complete waste and write off. When I woke up Monday morning, I was low on sleep and still in huge amounts pain but couldn’t take anything more because I had my appointment with GI Guy to go to. The intended plan for Monday was that I was going to leave a few minutes early to fill up Eggnog with a tank of gas, go to my appointment, stop off at the pharmacy to drop off my prescription refill, then go to Mom & Dad’s to drop off Eggnog for Baby Bro to use for the week. When Mom called me to see how I was feeling and to see what was up, she kept asking me all sorts of questions and kept poking me with that big ass stick about my pain until I basically had a complete meltdown. It hadn’t been her intention, but it was just too much for me to deal with. Anyhow, what ended up happening was somehow she convinced me to eat my breakfast (this was about 300pm in the afternoon) and just drive to their place so Dad could drive me to my appointment — don’t get gas, just eat and go over. So that’s what I did.

My appointment with GI Guy was about as good as it normally can be. And as usual, he had not much to recommend. He’s pretty much given me his whole medicine cabinet of drugs. I have 3 different meds that I’m currently on to deal with the gastroparesis, dysmotility and acid reflux. There is a fourth option, but he’d rather NOT give that to me unless he absolutely HAS to and he’s not feeling we’re in that position yet. That’s alright, I guess. If the wheaty-carby-starchy thing I’m still dealing with doesn’t get better over the next month, he wants me to go back and we’ll book me in for another scope just to see that everything’s okay inside. It’s been about 2-3 years since my last one anyhow. He did ask me if I had done a celiac panel at all and usually family doc does it about once a year on me because I keep complaining about the wheaty thing and it comes up negative everytime. Having said that, I totally forgot to ask him if I should CONTINUE eating wheat, just to see what happens, or just stay off of it and see how it feels in a month’s time.. oh well ;P

As annoying as the wheaty thing is, that’s not my biggest worry right now: my breathing is currently in sucktastic mode.

My chest hurts and it feels like there’s something pressing on my heart or my lungs or something which makes it so it feels like I’m not inhaling to my fullest capacity and I’m getting winded far, far too easily nowadays. The whole pain on yawning thing is back, too, which makes me rather displeased. The oxygen helps, but I’m scared that it’s not helping enough. I’m worried that the Viagra isn’t doing its thing either, which is to improve exercise ability, help lessen symptoms, and slow down worsening changes.

I don’t want this to feel like I’m having a drama llama moment, but I’m kind of scared that I might be en route to moving from the Viagra onto scarier meds that require a 24-hour subcutaneous pump. The thing that upsets me the most is when I get all these tests done and they always come back relatively unchanged, or improved, yet I feel like my condition is going downhill fast. Right now all I can do is wait for next week to come around for my appointment with Hawt Doc.

*sigh*

Valentine’s Day came and we had quite a nice dinner, but because I’ve been feeling so crummy, I feel like I’ve been a rather poor excuse for a wife lately and I don’t feel like I’ve been able to adequately tell The Hubbs how much I love him.

Just saying the words, “I love you.” doesn’t seem like enough. It doesn’t express my feelings properly. When The Hubbs tells me, “I love you”, it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, but when I say it, it feels almost like a cop out and that just doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t know if he knows how much it means to me when I make him dinner every night and pack his lunches for him. When I can bake him treats for his work snacks, it feels like it’s like my only tangible way of expressing my feelings for him. When I end up feeling crummy for weeks on end, like I have been, and the Hubbs gets worried by how much longer it’s been taking me to bounce back to some semblance of normal, not making a homemade meal just makes me miserable inside. It’s like my only way of saying I love you has been taken away. Not having dinners made, treats at the ready and lunches packed, makes me feel like I’ve been neglecting him. On the nights where I’m just not able to cook a meal and he decides to have peanut butter and jam on toast, or hot dogs, I feel like I broke a promise to him and that’s not a good feeling to have.

In my world: Food = Love.

Maybe this is why I love bento boxes so much — packing a meal for someone and putting into it a little bit of love, for the middle of their day, is something that you can feel good about. I suppose not many people recognize bringing a bagged lunch from home packed by someone who loves them is an act of love and I imagine the person packing the lunch will not necessarily feel like they’re putting something special into it either. I remember when I was extremely little (first grade, maybe?), Mom would send me to school with a full lunchbox. I distinctly remember opening these lunchboxes stuffed full of things that I liked to eat, but I could never finish them because there was too much food. I guess she was worried that I wasn’t getting adequate sustenance because I was bringing home lunches mostly uneaten. The one lunch that I always remember because of this non-eating issue had a sandwich, half an apple and a piece of spongecake and a plastic thermos of milk. There may have been more, but these are the things I recall distinctly. I guess she figured the more she put into the box, the higher chance there would be something in there I would eat? Even when I was growing up, food = love.

Total side thought: Anyone remember when a lunch was just a lunch and nobody was terrified about making sure food was kept out of “the danger zone“? Yea, I miss that… but we won’t get into how riled up I get about how much paranoia the food police have instilled in people. Seriously, I just wish some people would just chill out and live a little.

The lunches we pack together for The Hubbs, the night before, are just leftovers he can warm up at work because I feel that a hot lunch over a cold lunch is more satisfying. Most bentos are traditionally made to be eaten at room temperature and I guess this is why I don’t make “real” bentos — room temperature/cold meals just aren’t palatable when you’re faced with temperatures that are way below the freezing mark on a daily basis in the winter. I would be devastated if we destroyed one of my bento boxes in the microwave. I wish I had the artistic abilities to pull off something like the bento boxes some Japanese women make. There is so much stunning bento artwork out there. Even simply designed bentos I find absolutely heart-warming.

I guess what I am trying to say is: I want The Hubbs to know that my saying “I love you” means so much more than those three little words can possibly express. Why is it so complicated? *sigh*